International Development Cooperation: The Case of Brazil

Abstract

International cooperation is a less well-known characteristic of developing economies. It is often associated with concessional financing and humanitarian initiatives and understood as a means of exerting "soft power", whose intellectual origins date back to the Cold War. Unlike in power-based interpretations, international cooperation initiatives among developing economies do not take the shape of direct monetary contributions. Instead, they are mostly focused on shared development agendas, which in practice means technical support, educational and scientific activities, humanitarian support, assistance to refugees, peacekeeping operations and other partnerships implemented with the support of multilateral and regional agencies. Brazilian initiatives have been systematically measured since 2005 by IPEA, and they show a significant and increasing effort in terms of the volume of resources involved, as well as a diversified set of initiatives. Brazil’s international cooperation accounting procedures are in line with the TOSSD methodology, as well as with the UNCTAD pilot project on the quantification of South-South Cooperation for Development. All methodologies revolve around the issue of measuring the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals. Most of the projects benefit African and Latin American countries, while other initiatives counterintuitively benefit individuals from developed countries. In 2021, the estimated total volume of official resources destined for Brazilian international cooperation surpassed US$ 1.3 billion, a significant figure for a developing country. The initiatives directly implemented by the state and local governments of the Brazilian federation are still rather unexplored. This fact supports a general perception among policymakers in Brazil: future methodological improvements will inevitably reveal higher levels of expenditure and shed light on the intricacies of the Brazilian participation in the International Development Agenda.